Baysunghur In the Guise of Solomon With the Queen of Sheba

There is no individual artist named "Baysunghur In the Guise of Solomon With the Queen of Sheba." The phrase is Christie's catalogue title for a painting that likely served as a manuscript frontispiece, showing a ruler and consort enthroned in a court audience scene read as King Solomon receiving the Queen of Sheba. The painter is anonymous, part of an unnamed Herat court workshop, and no school, teacher, or training record for that painter survives.

The "Baysunghur" in the title refers to the sitter or model for the scene, not its painter: Ghiyath al-Din Baysunghur, a Timurid prince, son of Shah Rukh and grandson of Timur, given in Christie's own cataloguing only as living circa 1397 to 1433. No exact day or month of birth or death, and no confirmed birthplace or place of death, is documented in the sources reviewed. He was a calligrapher and statesman as well as the leading patron of Persian manuscript painting of his era in Herat, and is associated with major illustrated manuscript projects of the period, though the precise years of his governance and the production dates of specific manuscripts are not confirmed in the sources reviewed. Christie's notes that Baysunghur commissioned portraits of himself, and that the present painting was made either during his reign or somewhat later, based on a Baysunghuri model. He is the historical patron and probable likeness behind the "Solomon" figure, not the hand that painted the work.

Discussion of the painting is concentrated in Christie's own cataloguing and editorial writing, which situates it stylistically among related Timurid and post-Timurid depictions of Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. Separately, other objects connected to Baysunghur's court survive in institutional collections, including a folio in the Harvard Art Museums and an illustration catalogued as "Baysunghur school" in the Minneapolis Institute of Art, though neither institution is documented as holding this specific painting. No named critic in a major art-press outlet has published a signed, quotable assessment of this specific painting, so no verbatim critical quotation is included here.

The only documented public sale of this painting is at Christie's London, in the sale "Art of the Islamic and Indian Worlds, Including Oriental Rugs and Carpets," lot 25, on 27 April 2023. The pre-sale estimate published by Christie's and reported by Alamy's coverage of the preview was GBP 150,000 to 200,000. Christie's own editorial feature on the painting states a sale price of GBP 781,200, but the public lot page and secondary listing services (Lot-Art) do not display a realized price, leaving that figure only partially corroborated. No earlier or later auction appearance for this specific painting has been found, and no record of a private resale is available. Because this is a single object rather than an artist with an ongoing production, there is no broader price trend, repeat-sale data, or artist-level market to compare it against.

This is a single anonymous Herat court painting rather than an artist's body of work, so there is no catalogue raisonne, no artist market to track, and no repeat-sale history. Its dating and attribution rest on stylistic comparison to better-documented Timurid manuscripts rather than on a signature or a securely identified painter. Collectors should also note a real gap in the public record: Christie's own feature reports a sale price of GBP 781,200 for the 27 April 2023 lot, while the public lot page and secondary auction databases show only the pre-sale estimate and mark the result as unpublished. Anyone transacting in this specific object should confirm the final price and current ownership directly with Christie's rather than relying on the estimate or on either secondary source alone.